ROCK FORMATION

On a rocky outcrop in the mountains of British Columbia in Canada, the London-based architectural firm Gort Scott has crafted a house in concrete, timber and glass that responds to its spectacular surroundings

- DAVID NICHOLLS

Imagine a house in the mountains of western Canada, built for a client who wanted it as ‘his escape – a serene and tranquil place’. You might conjure a romantic image of a low log cabin tucked away in the trees, its 21st-century mod-cons concealed by a veneer of faux rusticity. There is certainly no shortage of that in upmarket ski resorts the world over.

But that is not what the British architectural firm Gort Scott suggested when it submitted its entry for a competition to design a holiday house in Whistler, British Columbia, for a Hong Kong-based family. ‘It was a special client,’ cofounder Jay Gort concedes. ‘He had spent holidays in the area with his family and eventually bought a plot of land – he has a passion for architecture and wanted something unique.’

The site, which overlooks a lake, was essentially a prominent rocky outcrop rising several metres from the street level through a scattering of pine trees. Considering how to approach this challenging topography, Jay and his cofounder Fiona Scott recalled a passage from the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1932 autobiography: “No house should ever be on a hill or anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each happier for the other”. This would become the founding principle of a design that won them the commission.